


bury me shallow where earth meets sea

by Evelyn_fireheart



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Percy Jackson, Dark Percy Jackson, F/M, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Minor Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Powerful Percy Jackson, an exploration of Percy's character if he had been less trusting and more broken that he is, he was forced into a world he wasn't ready for, he was made into a child soldier and that has an effect on a person, kind of, this is the result, with no warning and no chance of reprieve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2020-08-10 14:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20136838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evelyn_fireheart/pseuds/Evelyn_fireheart
Summary: Percy Jackson is older than he looks, now. Age lines his face not in creases at his eyes or the wrinkles of his forehead, as they might any other mortal, but in the hardness of his eyes and the straight line his lips form when no one thinks to look.Experience has made him stand taller, stronger, and when he swings his blade -any blade- there is no hesitation. No fear.His body is made for war in the same way Jason's is, and he knows it fits him. He knows that he will never stop being a Praetor of the First Legion, not really. Now he is a mix of Rome and Greece, a man forged in both hellfire and sacrifice just as much as he is a warrior of shadows and sunlight.He walks among what should be his people, and knows he will never belong.





	bury me shallow where earth meets sea

Perseus Jackson is a being of two worlds in almost every aspect of his life.  
There is the mortal realm, where his mother resides alongside school and friends and a life with a far-away death. This is the world he was born in, the world that cradled him in lies and pain before he was made into something that could not fit and was forced into a life he wasn't ready for. Sometimes he can be thankful for the life he has now, because he knows that he should be. But sometimes he looks to his hands and glimpses the blood that will never go away, and he knows it isn't truly possible.

_He's a fighter_, his mother used to say, _he never backs down. _Before, he might've been glad for that. Before, he might've taken the scars on his skin as trophies, a badge of honour for all the lives he’s saved. But he's older now, stronger, too. He knows what monsters crawl under hell's rotting flesh, and he knows what disgusting creatures walk under the sun's blinding light.

Now, he takes those words as damnation, and when he looks at his scars he sees little more than slices in a dead man's skin, signs of nothing more than slaughter.

Being a fighter means being a warrior in the world of his father. It means you go on quests and fight in battles and sometimes don't come home. It means dying young and living fast, means loving with everything you have because you know you wont have it forever.  
For him, it means that when he returns home from camp there is far too much relief in his mother's eyes.  
It means that he has knives hidden amongst his clothes and a sword clenched tight in his hand.

In the world of gods and monsters, there is no such thing as safety. A pen is never just a pen, nor is a hat ever just a hat. Everything has a purpose that ends in death. 

He’s grown up now. He’s no longer the child he’d been when his mother took him to Montauk, nor is he the reckless teenager that had danced around a battlefield with courage racing through his veins, simply because it was expected of him.   
Percy Jackson is a man, now. All those other accomplishments seem smaller, like pebbles on the ocean floor. The feats he values now are different to what he valued back when his mother would look fondly upon him and call him _‘undefeatable’._

He had torn his way through Hell and came out the other side with a blood stained smile and a singing blade. He had suffocated hundreds in the murky depths of his father -had drowned _gods_ on dry land- and had killed thousands more by the edge of his sword.

He’s grown, changed in irreversible ways. He still had his mother’s dark hair and still shared that slight tinge of madness with her, that wildness that was not enough to frighten, but enough to paint a picture of hard-earned freedom. Her golden glow still graced his skin, but the parts of him she had influenced through words and lessons and love- those were slowly corroding.

There was only so much one man could withstand. Guilt would always weigh on his shoulders, but so would regret and anger, and he knew that with the eroding tide of time, guilt too would become darker. Deadlier.

With time, guilt can become resentment, and though he still had his mother’s fierce heart and urge to protect, every slash of his sword cut a tiny piece of his humanity away. 

It’s shown in the way his smiles felt sharper, with a slight baring of teeth that felt too vicious to be anything but a threat. It’s shown in the way the ocean curves around him when he steps forward into the surf, in something like fear and reverence and profound respect, and though it reads as his own subconscious desire to others, he knows it for what it is.

Perseus Jackson is the son of Poseidon, the first in centuries, and his power is yet to be proved limited. He is an heir to the King of the Sea, Prince in his own right, and son of the ocean. Blessed magic lives in his veins, alongside blood of gold and red, and there are hurricanes of wind and ash in his soul. Percy is the son of the Earth-shaker himself, and gods lesser than he have wept at his feet for mercy.

The waves bow at his feet, in deference to their Lord. He is a newborn god, and the protector of their people. What frightens Percy most, when he realises, is that they are _right_ to bow. 

He’s more god than man, now.

When he reaches for the ocean it is already there, raging inside his very bones, before he even finishes the call. With every day, his strength and power grows stronger, and suddenly he understands why fighting amongst the children of the Big Three started a World War.

He’s not even at his full magical prime yet, and he feels like a nuclear bomb.

* * *

Like all other lost things, Percy had always felt the siren call of the sea in his very bones. Great power aside, the ocean took forgotten things in and delivered them to a new home. That, or a terrible fate. Percy supposed it depended on what one deserved.

He used to sit by an ocean just like this one, outside the grasp of the city's dry tendrils, and he would watch the way the waves bobbed. The faces in them were always kind, softened by a warm smile close to those his own mother sometimes gave him. Now, as he looked back on those simpler times, he wondered what they had thought of him. They were likely nymphs, but he wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were minor gods, checking up on the boy who had the spirit of the ocean in his heart.   
Did they wish to see what their Prince would grow up to be? Did they know, even then, that he would grow up to be a demigod like the world had never seen before?

Ever since he was a kid, he had loved the tug and pull of the waves when he toddled out to meet them with his grabby little hands, but now he was drawn to question if the sea had loved him too. Maybe even cared for him, in the way advisors would care for a prince of their court.

Those spirits had always been playful, that’s for sure, and no matter how many times the waves knocked him over and into the surf, he had loved it. It had always seemed kind, gentle, like a family friend babysitting him while his mother relaxed on the beach at his back. The spirits of the waves must have cared for him, or at least respected him. If they didn’t, why would they treat him so?

Poseidon certainly wouldn’t have known. If he did, Percy isn’t even sure he would’ve cared.

The spirits didn’t have to love their Lord’s son, but there was likely an obligation that they respected him. After all, now that he thought about it, Percy would’ve become their Lord, too, if he had taken up the offer to become immortal.   
Because even if Zeus couldn’t make him a god, he was the son of one, and the magic in his blood could. The sea was his home and, if he had elevated to immortality, it would’ve become his kingdom.

Human and yet divine. Mortal and yet everlasting. Either way, he was here now.

And with the wind tearing through his hair like a hurricane reborn, silencing the world and all it's responsibilities, he was glad for it.

He dismisses his thoughts of godship and sacrifice in favour of pressing his eyes closed and kneeling in the sand. The grains are rough against his knees, but he can feel the water in them, too. A sigh pushes past his lips, and he feels the water rush around him, gasping and whispering, but avoiding him in a circle of dry ground. He imagined it going through him instead.

He imagines the water rising along his skin and seeping down his throat.

He imagines the uproar there would be among the gods when the heroic son of Poseidon drowned. The thought brought a bitter smile to his face.

Oh, how he would love to see them scream. Just once. For every time he had heard his friends scream due to their uncaring recklessness, he wants to hear theirs. He would relish it. Every single thrum of pain and rise in pitch would be treasured and worshipped when he made the gods _weep_. _If, _he corrected himself, _if I made the gods weep. I’m not about to go ahead and sign my death warrant that easily. _

Percy sighed. He hadn’t realised that he still held so much resentment for Olympus. Of course, there was always some as the gods are utter assholes, but it had never been so encompassing before.

Before, it had irritated him, the hypocrisy of it nipping at his heels whenever he stopped to ponder on their treatment of him and his fellow demigods. They called him _hero_, named him _saviour_ and _warrior_ and _kin, _and all the while they treated him as lesser. As if he couldn’t bring their palaces to the ground with a thought.

He had believed he had moved past it. But then again, he had also believed that he was over the whole falling-into-Hell thing, but then the nightmares started.

Waking up screaming every night had taken its toll on him. Percy was paler, eyes sunken in and emptied by the constant exhaustion he felt. Annabeth had tried to help him by sharing the bed with him, and for a while it had worked.  
Her familiar scent coupled with her weight strewn across him in the form of a stray arm or leg had grounded him and had helped to soften the pain when he woke up.

But then, something changed. One night he woke up, and suddenly the world was in focus. It was like the universe had been dialled to 100; he could feel _everything._

The morning he woke up and could sense Annabeth's heartbeat -felt her _blood_ as it was pumped around her body- was one carved into his mind.  
Every time he closed his eyes he relived seeing her lying spreadeagled before him, hair messy and expression peaceful -save for the dribble edging down her cheek. He relived the way a quiet joy had overcome him, Percy’s mouth curving up despite the nightmare he’d just woken up from, and how he’d closed his eyes in a soft appreciation.

He relieved the sharp regret that followed.

As soon as his eyes fell shut, his senses sharpened. Percy could hear his girlfriend’s heartbeat- but not in the normal sense. He did not have enhanced hearing to the level that some children of Apollo had, nor did he sense it as Hunters of Artemis could. He could hear it in the way the blood moved through her capillaries, through the slight stutter in the current of her body as the valves to the veins and her heart opened and closed. His senses were focused on her, and his not-inconsiderable power was too. 

Horror and revulsion shuddered through him. This was the woman he loved, the woman he hoped to one day marry and grow old with. Percy could stop her heart with a single thought. It would have been so easy to just close his eyes and call to it, and her blood would have stopped.  
So simple.  
A thought, and the woman he treasured above all gods and titans and mortals would have been dead.

He wonders if he was raised by Poseidon and not his mother- if he was raised by an imperious god rather than a loving mortal- if he would have done it.

Perhaps not Annabeth. Maybe a different human, out of curiousity or for pure hatred for mortals, despite the hyprocrisy of it.

He would be a god, after all. Being murdering hypocrites is what they did. And with the level of power smouldering in his veins...

He would have been no minor god, nothing less than an Olympian if Zeus had granted him what he had first promised. For a moment, Percy lets himself wish for it. He may struggle with his power, may force himself to act as if it were lesser sometimes, but that is not to say he doesn't love it. Anyone who knew what the monsters of this earth could do would be glad to have his magic, if not for protecting others then for protecting themselves. Power is not something easily turned down when death is the other option.

Power is not easily turned down at all.

Perseus Jackson is not a weak man, and he did not choose for the magic to come to him, singing and willful and settling into his bones. But he did not protest, either.

He had fought his way through Tartarus with his lover by his side, had denied Death his offer through willpower alone, and had not offered any payment for survival. Yet, Thanatos did not come to collect, and Percy knew why. He had long since paid his debts in blood and anguish, and his smiles had long since become sharp with the immortality fearlessness offers. Only Thanatos knew why he did not take his payment as deeds rather than death, but he suspected it was because the god knew him for what it was.

If today was not the day when Death himself could not touch him, then it would come soon, and Percy hoped, for the Lord of Passing's own sake, that Thanatos would be nowhere near when it finally came. 

Sometimes, there were days when Percy did not know forgiveness for those who had taken from him, and his blade had killed beings higher than gods before.

Percy shuddered, abruptly drawn out of his thoughts by a gust of ice-cold wind. He's touched by a quiet gratefulness for a second- his thoughts had been growin far too dark -before he gains some sense and pulls his collar up to shield his ears from the weather's bite.


End file.
